Carla Gerardu-Low

Casual Genealogist Searching for Stories

Category: Gerardu Family Tree

Photos and posts about people in the Gerardu family tree.

Opa’s POW Journey Map — February 4, 2022
POW Timeline for Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu

Opa’s POW Journey Map

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I stumbled upon this awesome tool, StoryMap, to map journeys. It enabled me to take the research I have collected about my grandfather and present it in a sharable format.

The war in the Dutch East Indies was officially underway in early 1942. My grandfather, Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu (Opa) was a Sergeant in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force (ML-KNIL). He was in charge of the kitchen at his base. My father, Servaas, (age 14), remembers Pappy (his father) stopping by the house to tell the family that his unit was moving inland toward Bandoeng (now Bandung). Below is the geographical story of his time as a POW during the Japanese occupation. He was a POW for three and a half very long years.

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Recognizing Generational Trauma Can Change Your Life for Good — August 13, 2021
Remembering the Victims of the Japanese Occupation of the Dutch East Indies

Recognizing Generational Trauma Can Change Your Life for Good

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I started this blog as a way to memorialize the history of my family. The intent was to capture their stories for posterity’s sake. However, the process, not the stories I have written so far, is what has taught me so much more. In the many hours of conversations about my grandfather, I learned more about my father and his life in the Dutch East Indies than I could have ever imagined. Like so many people, I always assumed I knew my dad from a lifetime of interactions with him. My lifetime. Instead, I now believe that his early years during the World War II profoundly shaped who he is and why he does what he does. While his life in the United States is significantly different from his youth, his Dutch-Indo roots and the trauma experienced during the war shaped him. By extension, those experiences also shaped me.

Growing up in Colorado, no one around me knew this history. The war ended there on August 15, 1945. A few years ago, I discovered that the Netherlands commemorates victims of the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) every year on August 15th. The commemoration is called Herdenking. On this date in 1945, my grandfather, two uncles, and one of my uncle’s brothers were liberated from Japanese POW camps. Unfortunately, one of my uncle’s brothers died during a POW transfer on the Junyo Maru.

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VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery (Repost) — August 12, 2021
VJ Day Gallery 2021

VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery (Repost)

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This is a repost of a post made on the private Facebook page, VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery. Other than contributing four photos, I am not the author or administrator of the group. The purpose of this post is to share this amazing project.

Included in the gallery are my grandfather (line 11, 2nd from right), two uncles (last line, 9th & 10th from left), and brother of an uncle (line 23, 4th from right).

Post by Pam Gillespe, Admin, VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery:

As a tribute to all Far East prisoners of war on this 76th Anniversary of VJ Day, we are pleased to unveil our FEPOW’s Gallery collage.

It contains one thousand photos of those held as prisoners in the Far East, representing the many thousands held overall by the Japanese in camps right across South East Asia during WW2.

Among the one thousand FEPOWs pictured here are many different nationalities including British, Australian, Dutch, American and Canadian. Most are of service personnel of all ranks and all branches of the services, but among the thousand are also civilian internees – men, women and children.

These thousand people were held in locations as far afield as Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Japan, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, the Spice Islands and elsewhere.

Of these one thousand people, over twenty per cent did not return home.Also included in our one thousand are a number of FEPOWs of whom no photo could be found.

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A Mad Scramble to Prepare for the Japanese — February 17, 2021

A Mad Scramble to Prepare for the Japanese

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One of the problems with doing genealogy research is that it is easy to get distracted by new findings. They are the shiny new findings that are interesting and take one on a previously unexplored historical adventure. Without a doubt, I’ve done a lot of that in the last couple of years. I now have four family trees on Ancestry.com, a little over 2,900 people in the trees, and a decent system for organizing the documents that I find. Whew! There are so many fascinating stories out there, but now it’s time to get back to writing about my dad’s family.

My Opa – Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu

In my last post, I ended with my grandfather’s arrival as a POW in Pakan Baroe, on the island of Sumatra, in May 1944. However, before I write about Pakan Baroe, I want to go back to the period right before the occupation of the Dutch East Indies (DEI, now Indonesia) by the Japanese in March 1942.

It was a period of great uncertainty for everyone. After the Netherlands had surrendered to the Nazi forces in May 1940, the DEI operated somewhat independently for two years. Meanwhile, Japan was posturing that it intended to create a bloc of self-sufficient Asian nations, led by Japan, which was to be free of any Western influence. This intention was announced by Foreign Minister Hachirō Arita on June 29, 1940. Then on September 27, 1940, Japan, Germany, and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact. It was a defense alliance intended to discourage the United States from entering the conflicts. These events are only the high-level indicators of what was brewing. As the war continued to rage in Europe, the Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger (KNIL) or Royal Netherlands East Indies Army frantically prepared for a possible invasion in the Pacific.

Google Translate is available at the bottom of the page.

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My Opa’s Experience as a POW – Part 2 — August 12, 2019
POW Timelines

My Opa’s Experience as a POW – Part 2

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Continuing the story from Part 1

Chuka Maru

On Sunday, May 14, 1944, after five months of captivity at his second POW camp – the 10th Battalion in Batavia, Java (now Jakarta) – my Opa, Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu (Hubert) was selected to board the Japanese transport ship, Chuka Maru (aka Chukwa Maru). He was 43 years old. In relation to the World War II timeline, this was a few weeks before D-Day in France and a little over two years into the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

Photo of Chuka Maru ship before the war
Chuka Maru Pre-War Photo
Source: https://i2.wp.com/www.combinedfleet.com/chuka.jpg

The Japanese moved prisoners from camp to camp, depending on the need for labor. New POWs to a camp would bring news of the places they came from – some good, but mostly bad news. As you can imagine, word of an upcoming transport was surely an especially stressful time for prisoners. Hubert’s group of POWs, known as Java Party 21, consisted of 310 English and 1,615 Dutch prisoners.

Google Translate is available at the bottom of the page.

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My Opa’s Experience as a POW – Part 1 — May 3, 2019

My Opa’s Experience as a POW – Part 1

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It was after I read the book Unbroken, by Laura Hillebrand, that I started to wonder about my grandfather’s experience in a “concentration camp” during World War II. I knew that he was in a camp, but it was something he never talked about with anyone.

Then shortly after I published my last post, A Pivotal Moment for a Young Soldier, Comité ereschuld Onderscheidingen contacted me to inquire if my grandfather, Johannes H.T. Gerardu (aka Hubert), was a POW. This simple inquiry pushed my genealogical research forward twenty years and made me curious as to what had really happened to him during his time away from his family.

This is the story of my grandfather’s time as a POW based on information I was able to glean from his Stamboek (military record), internment card (see below), some extensive research done by Henk Beekhuis about the POW camps in Indonesia, and other sources. It is most definitely a watered-down version of the reality of his experience.

Note: Google Translate is available at the bottom of the page.

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A Pivotal Moment for a Young Soldier — July 3, 2018

A Pivotal Moment for a Young Soldier

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My Opa – Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu

Continuing the story from my previous post – A Very Long Trip – Rotterdam to Tanjung Priok

When someone decides to make a momentous change in location, one must ponder the pros and cons of such a decision. In this case, the pros were the adventure, advancement opportunities, and financial gain, whereas the con was moving away from everything he knew. It is hard to prove what Hubert considered an adventure, but I do have his military record documenting his compensation history, which may give us a peek into this aspect of his life.

J.H. Gerardu ~1921
Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu in 1921 prior to his departure from the Netherlands to the Dutch Indies

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A Very Long Trip – Rotterdam to Tanjung Priok — May 17, 2018

A Very Long Trip – Rotterdam to Tanjung Priok

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My Opa – Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu

Continuing the story from my previous post – 1921: The Decision to Join KNIL

This young Dutchman began a new chapter in his life on March 6, 1921, when he boarded the S.S. Wilis, destination Batavia, Dutch East Indies.

However, before I go there, in an effort to imagine what life was like when he left the Netherlands, I found this video that gives a peek into city life in Groningen. While this is not where Hubert lived, it gives you an idea of what he was leaving behind.

Stamboek Entry: 3/6/1921 Geembarkeered te Rotterdam a.b.as. “Wilis”

Fifty-five days. At sea. In 3rd class or steerage. Now that’s a long trip!

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1921: The Decision to Join KNIL — April 16, 2018

1921: The Decision to Join KNIL

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My Opa – Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu

He did it. Even though his father did not want him to. He did it anyway. “What right does he have to have a say in my life?”, he thinks.” He hasn’t acted as a father since I was seven.” That was when his mother died. She was forty-three. As solace, his father turned to the bottle. It must have been too much to bear. How does a man support and raise seven children on his own? Yes, the bottle helped avoid this reality. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Hubert essentially lost his mother, Maria Catharina van Engelshoven (21 Jan 1865, Maastricht, NL) and his father, Servatius Gerardu (29 Jan 1865, Maastricht, NL) that year. It was 1908.

Shortly after the death of his mother, Johannes Hubertus Theodorus Gerardu, better known as Hubert and his two brothers moved in with Servatius’s youngest brother Jos (Hubertus Johannes Josephus Gerardu, 25 Aug 1877). Jos and Elizabeth (Elizabeth van Eijsden, 18 Mar 1878) had five children of their own, so now there were eight. Imagine how loud and crazy it must have been! [Update: Only Hubert went to live with his uncle Jos; one of his younger brothers went to live with another uncle and one to an aunt.]

~1909 Class Photo
~1909 Class Photo in Maastricht, NL

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